History

Diagnostics For All’s (DFA) mission is to save lives and improve health in the developing world through pioneering technological innovation. Using our elegantly simple and low-cost patterned paper technology to create diagnostic devices, DFA strives to meet the needs of those living in resource-poor regions.

DFA was founded in 2007 by a group of scientists and entrepreneurs with a shared commitment to saving lives and alleviating disease in developing countries and other resource-poor settings through low-cost, innovative, practical diagnostic devices.

August 2014

Nominated for a $250K seed grant through USAID to develop an equipment-free, qualitative HIV test for infants that reduces the turnaround time for results from over one month to under an hour.

August 2013

First field demonstration of DFA's agriculture and livestock prototypes in Kenya.

Awarded a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop a point-of-care, paper-based diagnostic for nucleic acid detection.

July 2011

Awarded one of 19 Saving Lives at Birth Phase I grants from USAID for the development of screening diagnostics for at-risk pregnancies, co-funded by Grand Challenges Canada, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, and the Norwegian Ministry Of Foreign Affairs.

February 2011

UK Government and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation award Diagnostics For All $2.99 million to develop three new agricultural tests

January 2010

Una Ryan joins DFA as CEO and President

July 2009

Agreement signed with Harvard University giving DFA exclusive licensing rights for diagnostics technologies developed in the laboratories of George Whitesides

January 2009

Establishes research and development laboratory in Cambridge, MA

November 2008

Harvard University wins 5-year grant from the Gates Foundation, with DFA designated as subcontractor for the development of a Critical Organ Function Test for the liver

October 2008

Martinez, Phillips, Whitesides publish article describing novel three-dimensional patterned-paper diagnostics in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences